第58章

Your smile is more bright to her than sunshine, and your childish lisp more sweet than music.If you are sick she is beside you constantly, and when you are well she is behind you still.Though you sin and fall and all men spurn you, yet she clings to you;and if you do well and God prospers you, there is no joy like her joy.

Her love never changes, for it is a fount which the cold winds of the world cannot freeze....And if you are a little helpless girl--blind and deaf and dumb maybe--then she loves you best of all.She cannot tell you stories, and she cannot sing to you, because you cannot hear; she cannot smile into your eyes, because you cannot see; she cannot talk to you, because you cannot speak;but she can watch your quiet face, and feel the touch of your little fingers and hear the sound of your merry laughter.""My mother! my mother!" whispered Naomi to herself, as if in awe.

"Yes," said Israel, "your mother was like that, Naomi, long ago, in the days before your great gifts came to you.But she is gone, she has left us, she could not stay; she is dead, and only from the blue mountains of memory can she smile back upon us now."Naomi could not understand, but her fixed blue eyes filled with tears, and she said abruptly, "People who die are deceitful.They want to go out in the night to be with God.That is where they are when they go away.They are wandering about the world when it is dead."The same night Naomi was missed out of the house, and for many hours no search availed to find her.She was not in the Mellah, and therefore she must have passed into the Moorish town before the gates closed at sunset.Neither was she to be seen in the Feddan or at the Kasbah, or among the Arabs who sat in the red glow of the fires that burnt before their tents.

At last Israel bethought him of the mearrah, and there he found her.

It was dark, and the lonesome place was silent.The reflection of the lights of the town rose into the sky above it, and the distant hum of voices came over the black town walls.And there, within the straggling hedge of prickly pear, among the long white stones that lay like sheep asleep among the grass, Naomi in her double darkness, the darkness of the night and of her blindness was running to and fro, and crying, "Mother! Mother!"Fatimah took her the four miles to Marteel, that the breath of the sea might bring colour to her cheeks, which had been whitened by the heat and fumes of the town.The day was soft and beautiful, the water was quiet, and only a gentle wind came creeping over it.

But Naomi listened to every sound with eager intentness--the light plash of the blue wavelets that washed to her feet, the ripple of their crests when the Levanter chased them and caught them, the dip of the oars of the boatman, the rattle of the anchor-chains of ships in the bay, and the fierce vociferations of the negroes who waded up to their waists to unload the cargoes.

And when she came home, and took her old place at her father's knees, with his hand between hers pressed close against her cheek, she told him another sweet and startling story.There was only one thing in the world that did not die at night, and it was water.

That was because water was the way from heaven to earth.

It went up into the mountains and over them into the air until it was lost in the clouds.And God and His angels came and went on the water between heaven and earth.That was why it was always moving and never sleeping, and had no night and no day.

And the angels were always singing.That was why the waters were always making a noise, and were never silent like the grass.

Sometimes their song was joyful, and sometimes it was sad, and sometimes the evil spirits were struggling with the angels, and that was when the waters were terrible.Every time the sea made a little noise on the shore, an angel had stepped on to the earth.

The angel was glad.

Israel had begun to listen to Naomi's fancies with a doubting heart.

Where had they come from? Was it his duty to wipe out these beautiful dream-stories of the maid born blind and newly come upon the joy of hearing with his own sadder tales of what the world was and what life was, and death and heaven? The question was soon decided for him.

Two days after Naomi had been taken to Marteel she was missed again.

Israel hurried away to the sea, and there he came upon her.

Alone, without help, she had found a boat on the beach and had pushed off on to the water.It was a double-pronged boat, light as a nutshell, made of ribs of rush, covered with camel-skin, and lined with bark.In this frail craft she was afloat, and already far out in the bay not rowing, but sitting quietly, and drifting away with the ebbing tide.The wind was rising, and the line of the foreshore beyond the boat was white with breakers.

Israel put off after her and rescued her.The motionless eyes began to fill when she heard his voice.

"My darling, my darling!" cried Israel; "where did you think you were going?""To heaven," she answered.

And truly she had all but gone there.

Israel had no choice left to him now.He must sadden the heart of this creature of joy that he might keep her body safe from peril.

Naomi was no more than a little child, swayed by her impulses alone, but in more danger from herself than any child before her, because deprived of two of her senses until she had grown to be a maid, and no control could be imposed upon her.

At length Israel nerved himself to his bitter task; and one evening while Naomi sat with him on the roof while the sun was setting, and there were noises in the streets below of the Jewish people shuffling back into the Mellah, he told her that she was blind.

The word made no impression upon her mind at first.She had heard it before, and it had passed her by like a sound that she did not know.

She had been born blind, and therefore could not realise what it was to see.To open a way for the awful truth was difficult, and Israel's heart smote him while he persisted.Naomi laughed as he put his fingers over her eyes that he might show her.